


Hard Times: Contemporary Narratives from the Federal Writers' Project 1936-1941

by tomato_greens



Category: Captain America (Movies)
Genre: F/F, LGBTQ history, M/M, POV Outsider
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2017-03-28
Updated: 2017-03-28
Packaged: 2018-10-12 04:45:16
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,037
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/10482363
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/tomato_greens/pseuds/tomato_greens
Summary: Steve Rogers weren't a girl. He lookt it though—he had the bones of a girl underneath.





	

**Author's Note:**

  * Inspired by [Known Associates](https://archiveofourown.org/works/6292210) by [thingswithwings](https://archiveofourown.org/users/thingswithwings/pseuds/thingswithwings). 



> uh...I was teaching modernism and reading thingswithwings’ amazing fic “Known Associates” on the train, and then this happened during lunch at work???
> 
> The Library of Congress has a wonderful array of historical collections, including documents from the WPA/FWP, but this particular project did not exist and certainly would never have existed in this form.

 

LIBRARY OF CONGRESS - Collections  
**Hard Times: Contemporary Narratives from the Federal Writers’ Project 1936-1941**

Part of: Manuscript Division  
Format: Manuscript/Mixed Material  
Dates: 1936 to 1941  
Location: New York, United States  
Language: English  
Subjects: Interviews, Unpublished Interviews, LGBT History  
  
Notes: Includes interviews with Gaetano Moretti, Eileen Mary Flannery, Gertrude Redahan, Maria Bianchi, Lucy Brooks, Kevin O’Connor, Tom Randall, Mary Geoghegan, Angelo Esposito, Kathleen Murphy, Page Harris. Interviews were conducted by Helen B. Warfield and William Stansbury. Interviews were conducted in Brooklyn, Queens, and Manhattan, New York, United States.

_Excerpt  
Eileen Mary Flannery_

…Steve Rogers weren’t a girl. He lookt it though—he had the bones of a girl underneath. It weren’t his fault, understand, it weren’t that he askt to be such a way, just that’s the way he was made, taken after his slender mother and his father who weren’t anywhere. It’s that way sometimes with fathers. They up and die on you. So it weren’t surprising when I found him and That Ol Bucky Barnes slanted together behind the house Steve’s ma lived in, Steve dipped and rouged up like a girl, Ol Buck leaning over him with his red wet face expectant and desirous.

I know for myself how That Ol Bucky Barnes can be, given that he has tried to been with me. I said no to him on account of his roving ways and also because I heard he can’t keep it up, from my best friend Gertie who he begged for weeks to touch, after which he couldn’t make time with her despite her best efforts to get him going. She said she licked and licked, and I know from my own experience that Gertie has a hand at licking, but no, it weren’t agoing to happen: he tried to get it in her and he just fell over, done for, willing but unable.

“Sorry,” he said, kissing her on the mole above her eyebrow just like her mother kisses her before we kit up to go out and dance, “another time,” but of course he didn’t beg anymore and she wouldn’t’ve had him if he did. Gertie’s too good for That Ol Bucky Barnes which I told her as soon as he started hanging around. I wonder whether there were a slew of girls following in his wake like birds in the white crests after the boats in the Yard, clucking together that he couldn’t—he couldn’t—he could! he could! Could be some of them were better at it than Gertie, could be they were more what Ol Barnes was looking for. Course if you ask me what he were looking for were Steve all the while, but then Steve Rogers was sweet in a way Gertie never has been, doll mouth, blue eyes, collarbones like I always wisht for.

I haven’t got collarbones. I have them somewhere I guess but not like Steve. I been built my whole life like my mother were built before me, and though I’ve lived in Greenpoint as long as I can remember we were both born in the deep wild of Co Leitrim. Farming’s no good in such marshy land, but my body remembers the hardness bettern I do since for me it’s our clapboard house all the way back. I tell you it’s frank unfair that Steve was born a boy with the collarbones he has, and here me with all my tender parts hidden underneath muscle and this old yellow house dress.

Neither Steve norn I have a father but Gertie does and That Ol Bucky Barnes does too, though you wouldn’t know it from the way he chases after girls so desperate. You’d think That Ol Barnes’s father would have something to say to him but it seems not, for there he was behind Steve’s ma’s house leaning into Steve with all his weight. For a moment I thought they were fighting—they fought all the time, those boys, either together against another fella or against each other with one busting a nose and the other one tearing out his fingernails. Half the time it didn’t seem to matter to them who they were fighting as long as someone got purpled up. But this time they weren’t. They were hanging together.

Now I am not a person to be shocked by something as typical as Ol Barnes chasing a pair of collarbones, given that he is still known around Greenpoint though he and little Steve Rogers moved down to Montague St last I heard. Together, together, of course together—when weren’t they together? I spend some time down that way myself and I haven’t caught sight of them yet, but to be honest I weren’t looking too closely. Gertie comes with me and we distract ourselves fine with all the sights to see. Away from my own mam I haven’t to wear such a dress, but Gertie girls up fine. She never minds it if I wear trousers: it makes it easier she says, to lick.

So there That Ol Bucky Barnes was, alicking for himself for once, with little Steve Rogers caught up and tranced up in him. He was handsome, Ol Buck, a dip in his chin, which is how he got Gertie’s attention in the first. Don’t mind if I tell you I were jealous when he chased after her—in a house dress I haven’t got anything on his good looks though in trousers I’ve never found complaints, and back then I had only house dresses to my name, a yellow one, a pink one, terrible sallow things that shown off my no-collarbones. Little Steve Rogers must have thought him handsome, too, and I don’t blame him for’t. Like me he was part woman, underneath. Like me he understood Ol Bucky Barnes’s face was a specialty.

I tell you I never had any regrets after that about turning Ol Buck down for a night since I’ve discovered trousers. If he’d tried to get it in me he mighta never come back, and where would little Steve Rogers be without him? Without their faces pressed together, Steve all painted in middle of the night, stuck like glue by their together-worship?...  
_Read more_

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